The medical imaging apparatus including such as an ultrasonic imaging apparatus or a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus obtains the image of a portion of the diagnosing object that includes a fetus and constructs a three-dimensional image of the fetus using a volume rendering method for example, and display the three-dimensional image on a display screen.
The volume rendering method constructs, using the volume image data of the diagnosing object, a three-dimensional image of the fetus as seen from an arbitrary viewing point based on a plural of voxel image data that lie on the line of sight to the fetus.
However, since voxel data of a placenta are located closer to the viewing point than the voxel data of the fetus, a clear image of the fetus cannot be obtained from the volume data that contain voxel data of the placenta and the fetus due to the fact that the voxel image data the placenta affect the image of the fetus.
Thus, in order to obtain a clear three-dimensional image of the fetus, voxel image data lying between the viewing point and a precutting plane established at a precutting line set up at a point on the line of sight are removed so that a clear three-dimensional image of the fetus can be constructed from the remaing voxel image data. (See, for example, Patent Document 1 listed below.)